The proposed research is based on the logic that drinking-related insults or impugnments will evoke behavior aimed at restoring one's sense of well-being, and that impugnments which imply that chronic drinking is caused by something about the person that is difficult to modify, like his character, or his having an incurable disease of alcoholism, may lead to unconstructive esteem restoring activity such as denial and more drinking, while impugnments that imply drinking is a specific and modifiable behavior should be more likely to evoke constructive rehabilitative effort. This reasoning was supported by a preliminary study reported in the proposal that tested the effects of these two types of impugnments directed at subjects' disease detection practices. The first phase of the proposed research will examine the effects of behavior of heavy drinkers of these two kinds of drinking-related impugnments delivered in a face to face personal manner. The behaviors measured will be subjects' openness to treatment, their view of how much they can benefit from treatment, their tendency to seek drinking information and actual drinking. A second phase of this research will examine the same logic relative to current educational efforts concerning alcohol abuse that are conducted over television. It is predicted that the two types of impugnment (those which imply that drinking has an unmodifiable cause and those which imply that its cause is modifiable) transmitted by radio or television will have similar effects to those obtained by personal impugnment, but that these effects will be emphasized by mode of presentation.